Tag Archives: JOAQUÍN SOROLLA AND BASTIDA

Open and interconnected spaces are shown as a blank canvas from which the works emanate, gaining prominence by themselves. For all to see, its large and visible windows clearly reveal a pure and calm environment in which the brilliant simplicity and luminosity act as the perfect support for any type of piece. The distribution has been planned with the idea of creating different exhibition environments to, in this way, create a coherent and visually attractive discourse on the different thematic auctions.

Although Setdart has always opted for the online format, being a pioneer and a fundamental reference in this medium, the new headquarters offers an additional point. The combination of technology and the exhibition hall brings the public and the works even closer together, in this way grouping them in a suitable context and putting them more than ever within the reach of experts and curators, allowing to serve as a bridge between the market, the collectors. and researchers.

If there is a genre in which Picasso turned his most intimate side, it was undoubtedly the portrait. Well, it was always the people closest to him who would make up a gallery of portraits that, seen through the rear-view mirror of his history, reveal much of the vicissitudes or joys through which the painter from Malaga was passing at that time.

Unlike so many other artists, Picasso never gave in to official portraiture. He did not let the commissioning of portraits taint the frankness of his vision, for this genre was like a visual diary to him. Thus, it would always be friends and friends, lovers and wives, those who would pose for the painter, and through those features (sometimes passed through the sieve of cubist disfigurement; other times, caricatured with tender irony) they would betray us the type of An intimate battle that was being waged between the two in the tumultuous life of the artist.

The evolution of his work, its different stages, were captured in emblematic portraits: see those of Carlos Casagemas and that of Jaume Sabartés in his melancholic blue age, or the cubist experiments with Jacqueline’s face, the expressionist unfoldings of Dora Maar (in those who have wanted to read an omen of dementia)… Always surrounded by poets, musicians and writers, figures such as Jean Cocteau, Erik Satie, Igor Stravinski, Guillaume Apollinaire… would also be radiographed by Picasso’s sharp gaze.

We often find simplistic definitions of Levantine Luminism, interpreting it as a Spanish translation of French Impressionism. A more in-depth look at the Valencian landscape phenomenon and at different points on the peninsular coastline, as it developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, offers us a somewhat more complex panorama.

Although it is true that the Mediterranean light and the Levantine beaches impressed the painting a plain air of Valencians and Barcelonians (the Sitges School would be the second major focus of Luminist painters) with their own face, marked by a palette of intense whites, golden glitters and sparkling blues, Spanish luminism is not a mere local adaptation of the impressionism of the neighboring country .

In fact, the Valencian luminism and the Sitges luminist school are rooted, on the one hand, in the realistic tradition of Ramón Martí Alsina and Carlos de Haes, and on the other, they drink in the landscaping of the Barbizon school, being also the figure of Mariano Fortuny a key reference.

The great success of Luminism, an involuntary and unexpected success, was to transgress the reigning end-of-the-century academicism in the Spanish territory, but at the same time, enjoying full acceptance, even from the most conservative circles.

The vibrant brushstroke, the play of textures, the instantaneous capture, the perceptual abstractions … were so integrated into the manners themes of Joaquín Sorolla and Alberto Pla Rubio, that the nineteenth-century folklorist genre is radically surpassed.

The beaches were for these painters places where spontaneous enjoyment was expressed in faces, gestures, baths and colors, in people of different social classes and of all ages . Children letting themselves be licked by the waves on the seashore, elegant mothers watching over them, young people having fun and exchanging confidences … Well, the beach was also like a theater box, where people watched the show (in this case, the infinite sea) but also they observe each other, and they like to see themselves socially represented. White and light clothes

Sorolla’s ladies wear light white garments, stirred by the breeze. They cover their heads with sophisticated hats that veil their features. In each Sorolla painting, the drawing disappears under the impetus of a brushstroke that captures in myriad reflections, transparencies and splashes the dialogues between the sea, the sky, the sand and its people.

The Valencian coastal scenes, with their dazzling tonal iridescence, would influence a group of painters settled in Sitges, including Arcadi Mas, Joaquim de Miró and Roig Soler, who were intoxicated by the summer lights that bathed the picturesque (a the same as cosmopolitan) town. They painted the Paseo de la Ribera and the beach from infinite angles, planting the easel on that privileged coastline, silhouetted with white houses.

Levantine luminism was a valuable hinge between the realistic tradition and full modernity , acting as a link between the legacy of Mariano Fortuny and the generation of Hermenegildo Anglada Camarasa.